German fusion firm builds a $150M laser lab in Colorado

Marvel Fusion, a German fusion energy company, has finished the outer structure of its new laser lab on Colorado State University's Foothills Campus. The $150 million facility is a partnership between Marvel Fusion, CSU, and the US Department of Energy, and it will eventually house lasers designed to compress fusion fuel hard enough to release net energy.

That's the same basic physics goal as the National Ignition Facility in California. NIF first hit fusion ignition — meaning the fuel briefly gave off more energy than the lasers put in — back in 2022, using a different laser setup. A second serious US laser-fusion site, built with a foreign private partner, is a real sign the field is growing beyond one government lab.

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Will this lab ever actually try to make fusion? Not for a while yet. Marvel Fusion has only finished the structure — the lasers still have to be installed, and the real fusion experiments the lab exists for haven't happened.